


To Cinders

by Major



Series: The Way Home [6]
Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Angst, Drama, Fluff, M/M, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-11
Updated: 2017-02-11
Packaged: 2018-09-23 14:05:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,381
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9660485
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Major/pseuds/Major
Summary: Aaron and Eric return to Alexandria to see what is left of their house after the fire.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Looking forward to the show being back tomorrow! Hope there are some Aaron/Eric scenes in the back half of the season and neither dies. Tall order with TWD.

Leaving the Hilltop was harder than he thought it would be. They packed what little belongings they acquired there, vacated their temporary room, and made their goodbyes. Eric hugged Sasha too long, Aaron hugged Maggie too hard, and they left Gregory with a final batch of cookies and no heartache.

Getting back to Alexandria was a strange mix of relief and dread. Tara pulled the gate back for them, and they stopped the car just inside to accept the warm welcome she was offering.

“We cleared what we could for you,” she said when she was pulling back from Eric, expression clouding over. “There… wasn’t much left.”

Aaron knew it but even knowing it and hearing it from Tara wasn’t enough of a balm to stop his heart from dropping when they got up to the house and saw what was left of it. ‘Not much’ was overselling it. It was gone.

The house was burned to cinders. There was no structure left. While they were away, he imagined coming back and carefully walking the halls of the skeleton that remained standing after the fire, but there was no skeleton to speak of. What used to be their home was flattened to the ground, black and charred to burned scraps.

“There’s nothing…” Knowing and _knowing_ were two different things.

Behind him on the street, Eric laughed. And laughed harder. Aaron turned to find him doubled over, tears in his eyes from laughing so hard. It would have concerned him if he didn’t see what was coming before Eric slapped a hand over his mouth and froze. The laughter hitched and caught in his throat, became something worse. Aaron turned away so he wouldn’t have to see the crestfallen acceptance overtake him. He reached an arm back, hand out for him, and Eric stepped forward a few seconds later to take it in his. Aaron closed his fingers around his tightly and stared at the ashes of their home. One more thing taken for no reason at all.

“Aaron.”

He looked over to see Rick walking quickly towards them from his own house. They shook hands, and Rick and Eric shared a nod.

“I’m glad to see you back. Both of you.” Rick looked Eric up and down. “You look good. How are you?”

“I’m…” Eric was having a hard time taking his eyes away from the carnage of their house to answer. “I don’t know what I am. My leg works. It hurts sometimes. But.”

His eyes were pained, and it was too much to see his own anguish mirrored in him right now. Again, he took his hand and looked away.

“This is difficult,” he told Rick, which was obvious but needed to be said anyway since he was struggling to find words that weren’t screams as he took in the pointless destruction. That was Negan’s specialty.

“I understand.” Rick wasn’t just saying that, which Aaron appreciated. Rick understood having your life flattened and having to start over in ways far worse than a house fire. “We found a few things, salvageable. We put them in a box. I have them in my house, safe.”

Eric perked up at that.

“We also made up the downstairs guest room for you. Negan came.” The name was harsh inside his voice. “Cleared out the two vacated houses.” The houses of the people he killed, Olivia, Spencer, and Jane. “There’s nothing left. We’re going to get some stuff together, get you guys started, but it’ll take some time. Until then, you two are staying with us. Our home is yours. As long as you need it.”

“Thank you.”

It took a moment, but Eric echoed his gratitude in a sullen tone that pained him.

There still weren’t many mattresses in Alexandria and none unspoken for, so their room was equipped with a dresser and some blankets and pillows on the floor. One side had a line of couch cushions padding it - for Eric’s leg, he assumed - and their thoughtfulness made everything worse and better.

The box of salvaged belongings was small and only half full. Eric pushed aside the few items, digging into the corners.

“It’s not in there?” Aaron asked, knowing what he was searching for without needing to ask.

Disappointment replaced the mild strands of hope that had flipped other things out of his way. He didn’t say anything, just sat back on his haunches, and Aaron pressed a kiss to the side of his head sympathetically. After all of the people that were lost, things had lost whatever arbitrary value they had before, but Eric hadn’t quite shaken sentiment yet.

“Maybe it’s buried in the rubble, and I could still find it?”

Aaron nodded, not really believing it, not thinking Eric did either. “Maybe.”

Probably not. Things got lost now, they tended to stay that way.

“Hey.” Daryl was standing in the doorway, staying back, giving them space and maintaining his own.

Aaron smiled. “It’s good to see you.”

“Good to see him,” Daryl said, gesturing to Eric. “How’s the leg?”

“It’s fine, but I’m amputating it to get people to stop asking about it,” Eric replied and went back to sifting through the box.

“What’s with him?” Daryl asked.

“I’ve been,” Aaron chose his words wisely, “moderately incessant.”

“You’ve been annoying,” Eric corrected. “Ooh!”

He lifted Prince’s Purple Rain album from the box, a corner of the plastic melted and soot on the cover but otherwise another survivor of the end times. It wasn’t what he was looking for, but at least he could keep playing it ad nauseam.

Aaron lifted a wry eyebrow. “What more could we need?”

It didn’t take more than a day for things in Alexandria to go back to life as usual: Rick asked him to go on a hunt for ammo with him, he packed a bag, and got ready to say goodbye. Every goodbye was a last goodbye; that had to be the rule. Glenn didn’t get one. Abraham and Olivia didn’t. Spencer and everyone else they lost didn’t have a chance to see it coming, so Aaron said goodbye in his head, the way he would need to if he didn’t come home.

He could see the same reluctance in Eric’s eyes as he pulled out of a hug and readjusted Judith on his hip. He was going to keep an eye on her and Carl while they were gone.

Aaron let Judith play with his finger while he said, “No disasters while I’m gone. I’d advise against using matches.”

He lingered in the doorway, because he didn’t want to go. Rick, Daryl, and Michonne weren’t out yet anyway.

“I promise to be low-key.” Eric’s hand pressed against his chest as he looked down. “Getting hurt, our house. It’s my fault. I put up those stupid lights.”

“Hey.” Aaron caught his chin in his hand and turned his face back to him. “This is not your fault. This is not you. What we lost was taken from us. Don’t take that on.” The guilt, the responsibility; the cross was too heavy and didn’t fit on his shoulders. He dropped his hand over the one on his chest and gave it a gentle squeeze as he attempted a wan smile. “But maybe we skip the lights next year.”

Eric leaned forward for a quick kiss and a sarcastic nod. “They clashed with our menorah anyway.”

Aaron gripped his walkie-talkie as he backed away. “As long as I’m in range.”

Eric nodded as Daryl came out, rubbing Judith’s head as he passed.

“Later, Lil Ass Kicker.”

Michonne kissed her head as she followed after, and Rick paused to do the same before stepping out onto the porch.

“Thank you.”

“Just remember I charge by the hour,” Eric teased.

Rick lifted an eyebrow.

“Just pay him in oranges,” Aaron suggested and looked back over his shoulder as he set off. Eric lifted Judith’s hand in a tiny wave, and he felt a catch in his chest.

It could be their last goodbye. But he would try to make sure it wasn’t.

****

“Eric, do you copy?”

A horde had slowed their progress significantly. They got stuck in an abandoned house a few miles from Alexandria and had to hunker down for the night and wait for it to pass. The others were getting dinner started with a can opener and plastic forks, and he stole a moment alone in what used to be a little boy’s room upstairs. There were Superman posters on the wall and baseball cards on the dresser.

_“God, don’t you miss cell phones? You didn’t have to copy things or be over on cell phones. …Over.”_

Aaron settled down on a corner of the bed over the red and blue sheets.

“I miss you more.”

_“You’ve been gone three hours. There’s nothing to miss. Cell phones, on the other hand, are toast. Have you scavenged a fully functioning nationwide network, new phones, and working cell towers yet?”_

“No. Still on the list.” Right under a cure for the undead, a nuke to drop on Negan’s compound, and the restoration of civilization. It was an optimistic list.

_“Get on that. And if you happen to come across—”_ His thumb slipped from the talk button, and Aaron took the opportunity to interrupt.

“I will break any copy of _Thelma & Louise_ that I find. You’ve watched it enough for one lifetime.” Or three.

_“Evil.”_

****

He checked in the next morning while Daryl was checking that it was clear to set out, and he was getting his pack on. He was feeling better after Rick told him about the guns they found at the abandoned gun range while he and Eric were at the Hilltop. They badly needed bullets, but they were better off in the weapons department that they had been after Negan cleaned out their armory.

“I don’t know how much longer we’ll be in range.”

Walkie-talkies had replaced teleportation devices and time machines in the advanced technology department. They were more valuable than an X-Box now, closer to gold than a big screen TV or a computer. Getting to hear Eric’s voice as far away as he was now was practically witchcraft nowadays.

_“Just be safe.”_

“You too.”

The walls didn’t keep death out anymore.

****

“Eric?” he tried the walkie that night, closed up in an emptied gas station they had secured after a long day of scouring for bullets.

Static came back.

They were too far. It felt a little less like magic that far out, but he fell asleep with it clutched in his hand anyway.

****

They found one box of shells in the home of a collector with a whole wall to rack guns, but all of his guns were cleared out. They didn’t have a shotgun for the shells but took it back with them anyway.

He tried contacting home when they were closer but still only got white noise in response. He wondered, not unreasonably, if the community had run into more trouble inside the barricades than he and Rick had run into outside of them.

He wondered more the closer they got with only silence in response.

****

As soon as they made it far enough in the car ride back to reasonably assume they were in good range, he tried again. “Hey. Checking in. We’re almost back. You there?”

It took a few seconds, but there was a rustling over the speaker and someone replied. _“Hey. You all good?”_

It was Tara.

A stab of fear went through him. “Yeah. We’re fine.” They agreed beforehand not to reveal anything they found over the walkies. They could never be sure they were the only ones listening. “Why isn’t Eric answering?”

_“He—”_ Static. _“—left…and—We can’t—”_

White noise replaced her voice before silence took over. Aaron shared a look with Michonne in the backseat of the car.

“Why would he leave?” she asked.

Daryl glanced back. “We couldn’t hear jack. She could’ve meant anything.”

Rick caught his eye in the rearview mirror and didn’t say anything. Rick knew better than to assume good news.

“We’re almost there,” he said.

Aaron sat silently, clutching the walkie-talkie, and thinking about the cinders left behind of their home.

****

Rosita pulled the gate back, and Aaron jumped out of the car to hurry to her.

“Rosita, do you know if—”

He stopped talking as he noticed who was down the road. Eric was walking down the sidewalk, pushing Judith in her stroller. Tension ran out of him so quickly he almost dropped from the relief of it. Eric left the house. He didn’t leave Alexandria.

“Eric!” He walked over to them, and Eric was turning towards his voice as he grabbed his face in his hands and kissed him. He hummed in surprise but pulled on his shirt and kissed him back happily. “I couldn’t reach you. I thought you left the walls.”

He furrowed his brow. “Well, there was a toy sale at the mall. Judith insisted we go.”

Aaron caressed the top of Judith’s hair. She was lying slumped in the stroller, out cold under the visor of her stroller and the warm sun. Rick made his way over and knelt down to kiss her cheek with a thank you to Eric.

“She got really fussy,” he explained. “We couldn’t get her to calm down, so I took her for a long walk until she fell asleep.”

“So I was afraid,” Aaron deduced at his own expense as Rick pat their shoulders and started down the sidewalk with Judith, “of a nap.”

“You were afraid of a nap.” Eric smiled at him, hand going to the back of his head to pull him in for another brief, sympathetic kiss. A quick call home could have prevented that. “Cell phones were magic.”

“Maybe we should learn smoke signals.”

“Ooh, or scavenge a carrier pigeon.”

“Can we find a regular pigeon and then put him through intense carrier boot camp?”

“Sure. Scavenge a book on how to train carrier pigeons.”

Aaron wrapped his arm around his shoulders and started walking towards their temporary home. “I’ll add it to the list.”

Eric curled his arm around his waist and leaned into his side. “Under _Thelma & Louise_.”

Seriously. He would break _every_ copy.


End file.
